S.F. tackles dual challenge - being homeless and gay

Updated 9:46 pm, Monday, October 7, 2013

Lisa Aragon, who lives in a homeless shelter, gets a massage from Jane Ebaugh at the Project Homeless Connect event for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Lisa Aragon, who lives in a homeless shelter, gets a massage from Jane Ebaugh at the Project Homeless Connect event for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

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Ablessin Jordan attended the event with his dog Back Up, who got all dressed up.

Ablessin Jordan attended the event with his dog Back Up, who got all dressed up.

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

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Monday's event drew 300 volunteers, nearly 500 clients and more than 100 service providers, according to its director.

Monday's event drew 300 volunteers, nearly 500 clients and more than 100 service providers, according to its director.

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

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Taylor Quentin, 25, left, is escorted by volunteer John Hanig at the LGBTQ Connect for services, Monday October 7, 2013, in San Francisco, Calif. The event is modeled after the Project Homeless Connect after a 2013 survey declared that 29 percent of the homeless in San Francisco were lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. less

Taylor Quentin, 25, left, is escorted by volunteer John Hanig at the LGBTQ Connect for services, Monday October 7, 2013, in San Francisco, Calif. The event is modeled after the Project Homeless Connect after ... more

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

S.F. tackles dual challenge - being homeless and gay

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Someone stole Rowan Chandler's cell phone and pants as he slept in his tent Sunday in Golden Gate Park. The next day, he woke up to find two park rangers standing over him, telling him to pack up and get out.

For a brief moment, he thought of checking into a shelter. Then he remembered the last time he went to one, when he was called nasty names and hassled by other shelter residents for being gay. So he did the next best thing.

Chandler went to San Francisco's first-ever Project Homeless Connect for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people on Monday. It was like nothing he'd ever stepped into.

"Just being in a room with so many other homeless people who are like me is, well, I guess, nice," the 44-year-old unemployed library clerk said as he headed to the food line to grab a bag of groceries. "They've needed one of these things for a long time."

That was the consensus among hundreds of folks who streamed into the all-day event at the LGBT Community Center on Market Street, as well as the hundreds of volunteers and service providers who showed up to help them.

Project Homeless Connect, now in its 10th year, is a one-stop fair held every two months to offer homeless people counseling, housing, dental work, haircuts and dozens of other services they have a hard time getting hooked into amid their daily struggles for survival. It regularly draws a couple of thousand people - but when the city's biennial homeless count came out in June, showing that 29 percent of San Francisco's 6,436 indigent residents are LGBT, city leaders were inspired to craft Monday's event.

It didn't take long for clients and volunteers alike who gathered for the fair to realize that being LGBT lays an extra stripe of challenge and misery onto the experience of being penniless.

People complained of bigotry - not just from the general public but from fellow homeless people. They spoke of being beat up and scorned, and of feeling isolated and scared to ask for help.

That's exactly what Mayor Ed Lee and his point man on homelessness, Bevan Dufty, reckoned they would find when they came to the event, and they both vowed to step up efforts to counteract the problem.

"There is so much challenge on this issue not just in our system, but in the rest of society," Lee said. "We will be doing some education in the shelters, just as we've done about dealing with women and children in the shelters. We need to educate people to be more sensitive and inclusive. We will work on this."

Dufty darted from station to station, helping direct one client to a dentist and another to a housing placement program. He said he believes this was the nation's first Connect - a concept pioneered in San Francisco and copied in nearly 300 other cities and counties - to specifically serve LGBT people.

"We're hoping people get their services here today, and then go tell their stories to the city's Shelter Monitoring Committee, the Human Rights Commission or the Transgender Law Center," said Dufty. "I'm saying to everyone - don't walk away. Stay connected."

Chandler wound up getting housing counseling, but was still reluctant to go to a shelter.

"The last time I went, I was treated with real attitude by the others," he said. "Then I went to a service center for a shower, the guys there called me a 'puta' (Spanish for prostitute) and said I'd better 'man up' or else. That was in April, and I haven't had a shower since then. I've been using baby wipes or jumping in the ocean instead."

One of the longest lines for services was for dental work - a crucial service often overlooked in the street, where missing teeth are an impediment to getting jobs and untreated abscesses can become deadly infections. Booths for free glasses, medical evaluations and housing referrals also drew hordes.

Spanish-speaking counselors worked with dozens of immigrants who had no papers and said they felt a triple-whammy of discrimination for being Latino, homeless and LGBT.

"You find it so hard to fit in, because you get it from all sides," said Antonio, a 43-year-old immigrant trying to find housing, who didn't want his last name used for fear of deportation. "After awhile, it makes you feel like you're not part of anything."